OREANDA-NEWS. In a crucial bilateral meeting between Indian petroleum Minister Dr M Veerappa Moily and his Mozambique counterpart H.E. Esperanca Bias during Petrotech 2014, the Mozambique Minister for Mineral Resources exuded optimism that the deals relating the LNG project will fructify soon and the first LNG trains may start moving by 2019. This was one of the 11 bilateral meetings lined up during the Petrotech-2014, organized by ONGC.

In the context of Indian companies ONGC Videsh Limited (OVL), OIL and BPCL having committed significant investments in this Mozambique LNG project, Dr. Moliy urged the Mozambique minister to expedite the consortium related issues and also fast-track the development of the discovered assets. The Indian companies hold 30 per cent of the project costing around 60 billion US dollars, the operatorship of which lies with Anadarco.

Dr. Moily said that a draft of the MoU between the Indian and Mozambique governments have been framed and sent to the Indian High Commission at Mozambique. “We need to expedite the signing of this MoU as soon as possible.” Mozambique Minister invited the Indian ministerial delegation for the formal signing of this MoU, to document this G-2-G cooperation.Dr. Moily said that India will respond to the invitation very soon.

India has finalized a demand of up to 8 trains of LNG, starting with 4 trains. The pricing aspects were also discussed between the Ministers during the bilateral meeting, which was represented by ONGC CMD, OVL MD and other corporate honchos.

Given the expertise of Indian upstream companies like ONGC in petroleum business, Mozambique had asked for training their youth. “We are starting just now and our people need training from Indian companies who have been there for a long time”, said the Mozambique Minister. ONGC CMD Mr. Sudhir Vasudeva said that ONGC institutes are fully geared to impart the training and over 100 youth can be trained in a year.